You launched your podcast and have your first episodes on air? Congratulations! You set on a fantastic journey to build up intimate relationships with your community.
You learned how to record your episodes, edit them and upload them to your hosting platform. Now your question might be “How do I keep consistent in the publishing of my episodes?”.
Consistency is key when it comes to community building, no matter which communication tool you use. And, when it comes to podcasts, it might be even trickier. Consistency is a work in process, something that can be challenged very easily.
Between technical issues, getting sick, last minute projects over flooding our already packed enough schedule and, even sometimes a lack of motivation, let’s be honest, it can be very easy to say to ourselves, especially at the beginning when we don’t have much downloads, that it is not that important if we missed an episode. Right?
I know what I mean: I’ve been there too, and I am still working on that. I launched My Fashion Stories Box Podcast in February 2021. To be honest, 2021 wasn’t a great year for me. I faced administrative issues in Turkey and had to leave the country. I had to plan my moving and my cats’ moving during a pandemic, when lockdowns, red/orange/green travel lists were changing every day and, once finally back in France, I had to readapt to my home country after 14 years abroad.
My podcast wasn’t my priority and it took me several months to finally come back to it.
And here are the lessons I learned along the way to work on consistency in publishing podcast’s episodes.
Keeping up with consistency in podcasting
Consistency tip #1: Create an editorial plan
Having an editorial plan will help you to know what to speak about and when.
Usually, at the end of every year, I sit down and look at what I achieved during the finishing year. I underline the topics I talked about and the ones I didn’t. Then, I set my editorial plan for the coming year. I give a general topic for each month that I split into the different communication tools I’m using (my blog, social media, podcast).
When it comes to my podcast, I choose subjects directly linked with my monthly topic.
I do this for the 12 months of the year ahead and then, before the start of the month, I sit down again and, if needed, I refine my subjects. It can be difficult to prepare 12 months in advance in terms of contents and then in the process, there are subjects coming I didn’t think about. And this is totally fine. You have to keep a certain flexibility, depending on what your podcast is about. However, I always try to be in line with my general monthly topic.
Consistency tip #2: Organise your weekly schedule
Depending on the frequency of your episodes, once a week, once every 2 weeks, once a month, make sure you have a dedicated slot in your schedule for the preparation of each episode.
Also be aware that, depending on your topics, some episodes might require extra researches. Or, if you have a guest, you might have to plan the episode recording in advance, according to the guest’s availability.
For My Fashion Stories Box Podcast, I have the frequency of 1 episode per week I release every Thursday. The general topic of my podcast is fashion history. And, in order to better organise my time, I split the episode’s preparation into smaller steps, easier to deal with and to integrate in my schedule. Here is how my podcasting week looks like:
Monday/Tuesday: researches for the podcast’s episode
Wednesday: script writing, recording and editing
Thursday: publishing, podcast audiogram
Saturday: preparation of a Visual Diary for Social Media, for some episodes, preparation of a blogpost based on the script as a more complete Visual Diary
Sunday: publication of the episode’s visual diary
Of course, this organisation is what I tend to achieve. But, for some weeks it can be more complicated to achieve. It can happen that the recording and editing are done on Thursday morning.
And, if for some reasons you can’t publish your episode the day you usually do, no worries! It happened to me and I posted on my social media that, that week’s episode will be published later. However, I always try to stick to one episode per week.
Consistency tip #3: Announce your episodes in advance
This year, at the beginning of each month, I started to publish the My Fashion Stories Box Month Program to announce the podcast’s episodes topics in advance. By informing in advance my community what the next episodes will be about, I create expectations and I also feel more accountable to them. Consequently, I will have an even more reason to work on my episodes as I don’t want to disappoint my community.
By doing so, preparing your episodes won’t be just a bullet point in your to-do list but a rendez-vous you take with your community. And it will make your podcast even more special.
To put it in a nutshell, we could name these pieces of advice the POA Method:
Prepare in advance
Organise your schedule
Announce your program
And this method can be applied to anything, not just podcasting, to help keeping consistency in communicating with your community.
I hope this article helped you to better understand how to be consistent in podcasting and communicating with your community.
And, if you are not sure yet about how to add podcasting in your marketing and communication strategy, why not booking a discovery call with me to discuss your challenges and expectations?
See you soon and happy podcasting!
Cath @MyMarketingToolbox